Squatters Face Giving Up A Building to the Homeless

By EVELYN NIEVES

Published: December 4, 1990

In the last three years, a group of homeless families in the Bronx has occupied an abandoned city-owned apartment house on Crotona Park East, trying to make it habitable at the same time the city made plans to evict them and rehabilitate the building for other homeless people.

But on Saturday, a fire that some squatters think was caused by a lighted cigarette damaged several apartments, and the City Department of Housing Preservation and Development moved to close the building, forcing out the 16 families who lived there. Officials said yesterday that they would start today to knock down the interior and rebuild it for homeless families on a city-approved list.

The order to leave the building, enforced by round-the-clock police guards, has provoked charges by the families that the city used the fire to move them out permanently after two failed eviction proceedings in the last two years. The city housing agency counters that the building is dangerous, not only because of the fire but also because of structural defects, illegal electrical wiring throughout the building and tanks of propane gas that the families used for heat and cooking. Latest Clash With Squatters

It is the latest clash between the city and groups of homeless squatters who have opened up long-abandoned buildings, some before and some after the city selected the sites for rehabilitation or demolition.

The building damaged by fire, at 1724 Crotona Park East, and the building next to it in the Crotona section were scheduled about three years ago for rehabilitation for homeless and low- and moderate-income families, said Valerie Bradley, a spokesman for the housing agency. Ms. Bradley said the city would soon begin to enforce a vacate order for the second building -- where the homeless families from the first building moved in on Sunday.

"Clearly, the building is unsafe," she said. "There's no way to get out other than the front door if there is a fire."

But Richard Krulik, the lawyer for the homeless families -- about 100 men, women and children -- said that the two-alarm fire early Saturday morning was not deemed serious until several hours after the fact and that the order to vacate the building was not issued until Saturday night.

"What legitimate reason was there for them to go into the second building when there was never any fire there?" he said. He added that he had planned to ask a judge to allow an architect into the fire-damaged building to evaluate whether it is really safe, as he thinks it is, but that the city refused to let the architect in. To Seek Injunction

Last night, Mr. Krulik gathered affidavits from residents to present to a judge by 6 A.M. today in an effort to obtain an injunction against the city.

He said that after two eviction attempts failed for technical reasons, the housing agency had left the building alone for almost a year.

Ms. Bradley said the officials inspected the second building to see if there was structural damage because of the fire and found numerous violations warranting the vacate order. "We only inspected the common areas," she said."Our speculation is that, like the other building, the apartments at 1728 contain propane gas tanks for cooking. That's very dangerous." The building next-door is at 1728 Crotona Park East.

Yesterday afternoon, about 60 squatters, including 30 supporters from the Lower East Side Squatters, stood outside the building, some warming their hands in front of an ash-can fire, when three members of the housing agency's relocation department arrived to offer alternative housing. Dolly Roman of the department said it was offering to relocate 14 families in a South Bronx shelter for 200 homeless families.

Shortly afterward, other housing officials came and put a vacate sticker on the building's door.

Matthew Lee, who heads the Homesteaders, a group of about 200 squatters in the Crotona section and elsewhere in the Bronx, said the squatters planned to remain at the site.

"We don't want to jump any lines on people waiting for housing," he said. "But we've worked for these buildings. Why kick out homeless people and tear down their apartments to build other apartments for homeless people? Does that make sense? Why put them in shelters that cost the city a lot?"

Steven Stamos, head of the Iason Construction Company in Brooklyn, which has been waiting for several months to tear down the apartments in the Crotona Park buildings and begin constructing new ones, disagreed. "If they're offering them shelter, what's the difference where it is?"

But Alfredo Gonzalez, a member of the Lower East Side Squatters, said: "Shelters as we know them are death traps. These people have tried that. They don't want to live under curfews and rules that restrict their freedom."